


Time Won't Stand Still

by xoxoMouse



Series: PJO Personal Canon (Solangelo Centric) [6]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Cannonverse, Canon Compliant, Canon Divergent, Established Relationship, HoO - Freeform, I wrote this for me tbh, M/M, PJO, PJOverse, Post BoO, Post ToA, ToA - Freeform, Will and Nico are BOTH in therapy and they are COMMUNICATING, Will is SUCH a Leo Cancer cusp, Will's birthday, angsty will, au where chb has therapists on hand, chb, first I love you, sad bitch monday, solangelo, wills birthday is July 27th and I'll fucking fight over it do not test me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:35:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25940731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xoxoMouse/pseuds/xoxoMouse
Summary: Will birthday fic.Will doesn't like to celebrate his birthday because the summer months bring war and death most years. He decides he'll tell Nico anyway.
Relationships: Nico di Angelo/Will Solace
Series: PJO Personal Canon (Solangelo Centric) [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1884076
Comments: 1
Kudos: 59





	Time Won't Stand Still

Will didn’t like to make a big deal out of his birthday.

That was sort of an unpopular opinion at camp, though. The campers at Camp Half-Blood celebrated every holiday like they were packing a decade’s worth of experience into one night. Birthdays were... kind of wild, to say the least.

So yeah, Will wasn’t into birthdays. He didn’t like the attention and the only way to keep his friends and siblings from going all out and making a huge fuss over him every year was to keep his birthday a total secret; he’d even blacked the date out with sharpie on his medical records in the infirmary. 

Lee used to know what his birthday was. Will had told him before he had really found out what Camp was like, but still, Will had trusted him that much—and then he’d died. There was no one to remember his birthday that year and Will didn’t care enough to remind anyone. There were battles on or around his birthday almost every year. And then there was a war. And then another. He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to celebrate the fact he was alive every summer on the anniversary of so many deaths. 

To be completely honest, the only reason Will even remembered his birthday anymore was because of his mother. Will was a  year-round camper and he didn’t get to see his mother often; he visited her a couple of times a year on important holidays and sometimes just because she missed him, but there was a lot his mother had been left out on in his childhood. On one hand, he wished it hadn’t been that way, but on the other, he was glad he left years ago and stopped bringing monsters to her door. He never could have had a safe, normal life with her back in Texas. He had enough guilt to live with, he couldn’t handle being responsible for her death, too. 

A couple of years ago she’d gotten him a flip-phone with some prepaid minutes on a card. Most days of the year it was wedged beneath his mattress and box-spring in cabin 7 with the battery taken out so it wouldn’t attract any monsters, but there were a couple of nights a year when his mother knew he would be waiting for her to call. Nights like tonight, where he’d be alone in the infirmary during the graveyard shift with the phone burning a hole in his pocket in anticipation for midnight. She always called  _ exactly  _ at midnight, so she would be the first to wish him a happy birthday. Will never mentioned that she would be the only one.

But a couple of things had changed since last year. Well, specifically, one thing had changed and it was kind of a big deal: he and Nico were dating now. 

They’d gone from ‘friends’ to ‘more-than-friends' last fall and while a lot of things stayed the same, a lot of things were different, too. They spent about the same amount of time together, that hadn’t changed, and neither had the way they were around each other. They weren’t 100% mushy gooey romantic all the time, neither of them were really comfortable with that, especially around other people. Recently Nico had gone from only holding Will’s hand under the table at meals to openly lacing their fingers together whenever they went anywhere around camp. They had kissed for the first time back in January and it didn’t matter how many times their lips touched, it still made Will’s knees turn to jelly. Their relationship was pretty serious, in his opinion. So it would probably be a good time to tell his mother he had a boyfriend.

He was too nervous to do it when he visited for a few weeks last Winter. His mother had known he was bi since Will figured it out himself in elementary school, back when he hadn’t been able to label it but still knew what he felt all the same. She was very supportive; it never changed the way she treated him. His mom knowing he was dating a boy wasn’t really the issue—it was more the fact he didn’t call her as soon as it happened to fill her in on the news. The longer he waited the more disappointed she’d be he hadn’t told her sooner, but he just couldn’t find the words. He’d been going over speeches in his head for months and they never seemed to come out just right. He and Nico had been together for almost a  _ year  _ now; she was going to blow her lid when he told her. With shock, mostly, but a blown lid is a blown lid all the same.

He decided to knock out two big reveals in one night: He would tell his mom about Nico, and he would finally tell Nico his birthday. 

That was it, that was his big plan for the night. Honestly, he was just as excited as he was anxious. He was turning sixteen. He was sharing important parts of his life with the two most important people he knew.

Nico didn’t follow him everywhere by any means, but he liked to keep Will company on the graveyard shifts. Camp infirmary graveyard shifts weren’t anything like at a real hospital. Mostly they were an excuse for Will to stay up late doing paperwork or studying without keeping any of his siblings awake and then crash out on a desk or a cot in case any emergencies went down in the middle of the night. It might not seem like that would happen very often, but at least twice a month someone was rushed in for something. Pierced ear gone wrong in Cabin 14, a new plant hybrid releases a toxic gas in cabin 4, someone hung a sword wrong above their bunk and it  _ fell  _ on them while they were sleeping. Creating a camp full of magic-wielding, reckless, child soldier demigods was just a recipe for injury and Will didn’t like taking chances with being too slow to save someone.

Nico had become a pretty good assistant since he’d started helping Will on graveyard shifts. They weren’t always alone, sometimes there were people staying overnight for observation that they had to check on periodically to make sure everything was healing well. When there was a new medic being trained they would do a few shifts with Will or Drew to get the hang of the duties. He was a chill guy but he took his job too seriously to use it as an excuse to mess around with his boyfriend.

Will would be lying if he said he didn’t enjoy the peaceful nights when they were alone, though. Even if all they did was sit in the same room doing two different things, it was nice to have the time together. They stuck to their usual routine that night: Will would report for his shift after the bonfire and sometime after lights out Nico would sneak over from his cabin. He didn’t know exactly how Nico had become good enough friends with the harpies to keep them from eating him when he broke curfew, but he was smart enough not to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Something was a little off tonight, though. Nico seemed quieter than usual, more anxious. Will assumed he was just projecting again and was too fidgety himself to get a proper read on Nico. When the truth finally came out it was about half-past ten o’clock.

“Will?” He asked. He had been reading a comic in the chair from the waiting room he always dragged into the small back office/file room when he visited. He wasn’t exactly scowling but the skin between his eyebrows was pinched into a crease, a telltale sign of something bothering him. (Or him thinking incredibly hard about a  Mythomagic strategy—but Will had a feeling that this time it was the former.)

“Yeah?” He slipped a pen in between the pages of the medical textbook he was  reading through . 

Nico was twisting the skull ring on his finger. “I need to tell you something,” he said. “It’s been worrying me, the thing I did, and the reaction you might have when you found out.” Instead of looking at Will he was staring intently at his silver ring. “So I talked Aggie.”

Aggie was one of the camp counselors. Like, a camp  _ guidance  _ counselor. After last summer a couple of older demigods had come back to camp to help some kids readjust and work through the issues they’d developed over the last few years. Tim and Maggie came in once a week from the city, but Aggie had moved into the Big House until further notice. She was here for longer than the other two counselors so she had more patients. Nico didn’t like to talk about his appointments with Aggie very often just like Will didn’t talk about his own with Tim. Usually what they discussed was...heavy. Neither of them wanted the other to be a dumping ground for their problems. Will straightened in his seat, bracing himself for whatever news was bad enough to start off the conversation l

“She told me to just tell you. That...well. It doesn’t matter. But she said that if you finding out was stressing me out that much then it would be best to just tell you myself.”

Will had no idea where this was going. “It’s  alright . I won’t get upset,” he promised, because he doubted there was anything Nico could have done that Will wouldn’t be able to accept.

The breath that escaped his lips was shaky and so were his hands. “It happened last year on the Athena Parthenos quest,” he said. “I did it to protect Reyna. I did it to keep the three of us safe, to keep the camp safe.” He finally met Will’s eye. “But no matter how often I remind myself of that, the guilt doesn’t go away. He deserved it. He was a monster. But...” Nico squeezed his eyes closed, a  pained expression crossing his face before he opened them again and finally said exactly what he meant:

“I killed a person last summer. A year ago tomorrow, actually.”

Will  didn’t know what he expected but he felt a little sick when the thought of  _ 'is that all?’  _ crossed his mind. He had seen kids who not six months earlier had shared a  bunk in the same cabin cut into each other during the battle of Manhattan. There  wasn’t a person at camp who  didn’t have someone else’s blood on their hands in some way or another. 

“I’m sorry,” Will said, because he  didn’t know what else to say, because there  _ was  _ nothing else to say.

Nico nodded. “Me too. We shouldn’t be able to kill people.” He said, “I think it’s too much power.  I think mortals are too fragile to play executioner.”

“You’re right,” He agreed. “But sometimes we don’t have a choice.”

“It makes me sick,” he confessed. “The way it happened. The way I did it. I  didn’t remember it right after, Reyna and Coach Hedge had to tell me about it after I came out of a coma—but it comes back to me in pieces. In nightmares. He was sinking into the ground of a cemetery. There were flags and old, sun-bleached fake flowers slipping into the ground with him. Everything about it was awful. Each time he sunk deeper he became less and less human. I  didn’t kill him with a sword, Will. It was so much worse than that.” 

His voice was ragged not with fear but with contempt for himself and what he’d done. “One moment he was Bryce Lawrence and he was everything that was wrong with the world embodied into one sick person—and the next he was nothing. He was nobody. There was no flesh, no bone, it had all faded away until there wasn’t any physical trace of him at all. He was a ghost—no. He wasn’t even that. There was nothing left of who he used to be; there was only anguish.”

In the space between them there was a thick silence punctuated only by the hands of the clock above the door. 

“What do you want me to say?” Will finally asked.

Nico was calmer now. Not relieved, exactly, the guilt was still heavy in his eyes but there was also something lighter about him. A burden shared is a burden halved. “I don’t know. Anything. Nothing.” He sighed, long and deep. “You can’t change anything.  I’ll never forgive myself. But I just...you needed to know. You needed to know what I did before I let you get any closer to me.”

Will remembered what he, Nico, and Michael Kahale had done last August. He could turn it over in his head as much as he wanted to make it seem like they hadn’t killed him, but he would never fully believe it. Technicalities didn’t matter when someone’s life was on the line. It didn’t matter that Octavian had set off the onager himself,  _ they  _ had killed him by letting him do it. And it was the right decision. The world was better without some people in it. It never should have been their call; but life wasn’t fair the way it should be. 

“I still love you,” Will said. 

There were feelings and reactions couples were supposed to have when they said ‘I love you’ for the first time; there was a certain way he had expected it to play out between himself and Nico. Blushing; butterflies in his stomach; exchanging small, shy smiles. Instead Nico met his eyes with a hesitant sort of pain.

“You shouldn’t.”

“But I do.”

And that was really all there was to say. 

Nico was asleep in his chair within the hour and by the time Will felt his phone vibrating in his pocket,  he’d completely forgotten his plans for tonight. They  didn’t seem so urgent anymore.

He flipped the phone open quickly pressed it to his ear, eager to hear his mother’s voice after the conversation he and Nico had had.

“Hi, Mama,” He whispered. His accent always creeped back into his voice when he talked with his mother; warm, slow syllables that took their time leaving his tongue.

“Hi! Happy birthday, Puddin’.” Her voice came in surprisingly clear. “I can’t believe you’re sixteen already. You’re growin’ up so fast I can hardly stand it,” she said.

He nodded even though she couldn’t see him. “I know. I hate it.” 

She ‘ tsk’ed him and her voice was softer now, comforting. “It’s not easy growing up. You know that better than me,  I’m sure. But  you’re not alone. I’m only ever a call away whenever you need me.”

He pressed the phone to his ear with his shoulder and pulled the crocheted blanket off the back of his swivel chair. It wasn’t even really cold in the back office; he just knew Nico slept better when he was as warm as possible.

“I know, Mama.” He spread the blanket over Nico, tucking it in where his knees were leaned against the armrest, pulled close to his body; and he tucked it up under his chin so it wouldn’t slip off his shoulders if he fidgeted. He looked at Nico’s sleeping face and noted that it looked mostly peaceful. Maybe tonight would be a good night and it would stay like that.

Nico wasn’t perfect, but Will loved him. He didn’t have to hear it from him to know that Nico felt the same. He wouldn’t still be here if it wasn’t true. That’s what love was to Will, knowing intimately how broken you both could be and choosing to stay with each other through it. 

“Mama, it’s late here and I should get to sleep,” he said. “But can I call you tomorrow? I want to talk more.”

She sounded delighted. “Of course, sweetie. I’ll pick up before the second ring even finishes, pinky promise.”

He smiled and closed his eyes, letting himself miss her. “I love you.”

“I love you more.” 

The button clicked softly when he hung up. He slipped the phone back into his pocket and stole another glance at Nico sleeping in the corner.

Summers were hard for Will. It brought change and it brought death and no matter what he did, there was nothing he could do to stop it. The sun rose every day whether the people you loved were still alive or not. It was cruel, but it was the way things were. 

But it was time to move on. It was time to stop trying to make time stand still just because his brothers were gone. It was time to stop mourning when the trees started to bud and feeling dread when school let out. It was time to stop letting pieces of himself die when murderers got what they deserved, whether the judgement manifested through him or not. 

He was here. He was alive and with each passing day it felt more and more like he would be staying that way for quite awhile. It was time to start actually living.

**Author's Note:**

> Will's birthday is July 27th. Theoretically there will be a continuation of this fic next year on Will's birthday. Hope you liked it, sorry it's angsty.


End file.
